“Because of the Booker opportunity we’ll now be able to buy across 100 per cent of that crop rather than just 70 per cent that we could at Tesco, and that means we’ll be able to reduce the food waste,” he said, according to reports by Reuters.

The Tesco leader was speaking in his capacity as the chairman of food waste pressure group Champions 12.3. Initially formed out of the United Nations, the campaign organisation is a group of executives that have a target of halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level by 2030.

Champions 12.3 estimates $940bn is lost globally as a result of food waste, despite one in nine of the world’s population being malnourished.